


down to our bare feet

by lesbinej



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: But The Gang Is Not Practicing Social Distancing, Canon Compliant, F/F, Multi, Party, Pining, Social Anxiety, Waltzing, alcohol mention, and also hella ignoring her feelings for both yasha and jes, everyone wants to go home, jester definitely doesnt, jester is being gay and beau is jelly, like a snapshot ig, no resolution to this really its pretty open, well i guess it wont be if beauyester ever happens but like. i can dream ok, yasha is just vibing but also she wants to go home really bad, yasha may or may not even notice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23948821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbinej/pseuds/lesbinej
Summary: Beau has some conflicting feelings and chooses to ignore them. Because she's like that.title may i have this dance/francis and the lights
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Caleb Widogast (Implied), Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	down to our bare feet

Beau stands close to the elegant spread of  _ hors d’oeuvres  _ that creates a horseshoe-shape in the eastern end of the corridor, arms crossed and leaning against a pillar. Trying to act casual. Like she’s not super uncomfortable.

She’s chugged about half a bottle of wine at this point, and though it earned her some mortified glances and whispers, she doesn’t particularly care. Beau hates politics, she hates getting fancy, and she hates  _ dresses  _ worst of all. 

But Jester had given her those puppy dog blue eyes, and had told her that she  _ had  _ to wear a dress or else this random official would be super mad, and honestly, Beau doesn’t even know why she’s here or what they’re celebrating, and the only thing she’s aware of at the moment is how itchy the skirt feels against her hairy legs, and the cobalt blazer overtop that she’d negotiated to keep. The tie is loose and sloppy, how she likes it, but the dress cuts far too low for her taste. Anyone taller than her (which is, like, every single one of her friends besides Veth, because it’s hard being five foot two, okay) can definitely see down her cleavage. It feels like wearing someone else’s skin, but still somehow naked in a ballroom of older men that seem to be ogling her breasts every time she turns around. And it’s  _ gross.  _

Adjusting her blazer a little to fruitlessly attempt to cover her bosoms, she scans the room for Jester, planning out the chewing of a lifetime she’s going to give her after this party. 

The blue tiefling is gliding between social circles around the ballroom floor, looking somehow perfectly adjusted and in her element, smooth as water, despite being a blue-skinned tiefling with curling horns and a swishing tail. She’s probably used to that part, at least. A few feet away from her and back, Fjord is chatting with some elderly human man, both holding champagne flutes. He looks weathered, so maybe he’s a sea captain of some kind, and they’re bonding. Caleb and Caduceus are only visible because of Cad’s extreme height—Caleb has Caduceus by the hand, and they’re engaged with each other in some kind of conversation: Caleb’s brow is furrowed, and he’s stroking his beard, while Cad looks calm and amiable, but he always does. He’s snacking on some of the grapes, it looks like. 

Beau’s just scanning the room for Yasha, wondering where she went, when the woman herself detaches herself from the crowd and starts gravitating towards Beau, though it doesn’t look like she actually realizes Beau is there. 

Yasha, after glancing around, sighs deeply; her shoulders sag. 

“Rough night?”

Yasha doesn’t even respond to being surprised—it seems like nothing surprises her. 

“No, just… just a lot, I guess.”

Beau clicks her tongue in sympathy and holds the half-empty wine bottle out to her, wordlessly offering it.

Yasha takes it (and it looks tiny in her huge hands, twice the size of Beau’s) and tips it upside down into her mouth, dumping the rest of the bottle straight back and, with a large swallow, finishes it off.

“Hey,” Beau says half-heartedly, as Yasha is apparently considering what to do with it—when a serving boy comes and whisks it away from her—, “I was drinking that.”

“You offered.” Yasha shrugs.

“Hrmph.”

The conversation doesn’t carry much further without Beau’s input. Yasha has never been extremely talkative, and so they share a comfortable silence for a moment, facing each other but not really looking at one another—Beau’s eyes have wandered again, and she finds herself watching Jester as she dances with a lovely-looking elven woman in a green, flowy dress and an elaborate diadem crowning her blonde waves.

Beau watches for a long minute, watches as Jester’s hooves glide in perfect sync with the elf’s feet, spinning in an intricate Zemnian waltz that is  _ different  _ from Dwendalian waltz (it’s faster, there’s lock steps involved, sometimes fishtailing, and Beau watches all of the above just flow seamlessly between them), quick and elegant. Jester’s blue curls bounce as the elf suddenly drops her in a daring dip, her horns brushing the polished marble floor. A few onlookers clap as the two seemed to have garnered the immediate attention of those around them. 

Beau watches. And watches. 

Jester’s feet twine with the elf’s in a complex, vine-like pattern that Beau recognizes, but doesn’t quite remember the name of. All the names she  _ does  _ remember are entirely against her will. 

Something makes Beau look away, something inside of her that she doesn’t want to acknowledge, doesn’t want to look at or think about. Something ugly. So instead of doing anything stupid, as Beau does, and instead of even trying to  _ think  _ about the complicated mess of emotions that’s inside of her right now, that always is and she always kicks it away because it’s annoying and inconvenient and extremely not getting sorted out within the next few hours, she lets her eyes flicker back to Yasha for a moment. 

“Wanna dance?”

Yasha actually flushes, which Beau sort of expected. For such a large (hot, hot, so very very hot and attractive. Did she say hot?) woman, her social graces are… lacking. Most of her status comes from being intimidating. 

“I don’t…. know how to dance.”

“That’s okay. I know too much. Let’s trade it off.”

Still looking uncomfortable, Yasha lets Beau drag her into a Dwendalian waltz, slower and easier for beginners, settling into the familiar footwear easily. Years of childhood dance lessons have imprinted into Beau’s subconsciousness, and she almost doesn’t realize it until she stumbles over Yasha’s feet, who still has both of her hands just kind of awkwardly hanging there. 

“Okay… um. Shit.” Now that she actively tries to recall the lessons, they escape from her, and she’s completely blanking on what to do.

“Left hand… here,” Beau says, and starts to place Yasha’s hand on her hip, when she realizes two things: that she will Actually Literally Die if Yasha touches her hip in Any Way, and also that Yasha would have to bend over embarrassingly far to even reach it. So she quickly redirects Yasha’s hand to her shoulder, and (taking a steadying breath) places that hand on Yasha’s hip, which is closer to Beau’s shoulder level than she would be proud to admit. Then she takes Yasha’s hand in her other, and glides her feet forward in that careful, precise way that was grilled into her as a child, and how she still walks and talks to this day. Careful, precise, controlled. Energy flows, energy ebbs. Left, right, slide. Left, right, slide. Yasha has her eyes on the floor, watching Beau’s feet, and Beau watches Yasha’s earrings glimmer in the light, to distract herself from looking at her face.

“Just follow my feet, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Beau lowers her voice to a whisper, just between them. “Right, left, slide across. Back, left, slide across.” 

Yasha nods once, twice to Beau dictating the pattern to her. Right, left, slide across. After a few turns of the dance, Beau realizes she absolutely can’t spin Yasha—her arms won’t reach that high. So they just continue spinning the basic box, and Beau thinks it might be for the better anyway.

“Thank you, Beau,” Yasha says quietly.

“Hmm?” Beau was watching Jester again, her ruby red dress glittering with the light reflections, the sequins embedded into every square inch, the way the mermaid form of it hugged her—

“For teaching me.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure. No big deal.”

“Sorry I’m not very good.” Honestly, Beau hadn’t even noticed after the first stumble, but as soon as Yasha points it out, she does realize that the dance is a little choppy and slow. Her brain is still on someone else.

“No, it’s fine. Sorry. I’m not the best at… teaching?”

Yasha shakes her head. “I’m, um… very big. And sort of clumsy? And it’s hard to do… little delicate things.”

“Like the stuff Veth does?”

“Yeah. The little vials and liquids and stuff. I would just break it.”

“But you don’t have to do little… delicate things though. You can just swing your big shit around and break stuff.”

Yasha looks a little frustrated with the conversation, and stumbles again, this time crushing one of Beau’s toes with her heavy boot (concealed well under her uncharacteristically gaudy skirt—it makes Beau wish she’d been a little more clever with her outfit). Beau rears her foot up in pain, instinctually, hissing under her breath and hopping a few times, the dance grinding to a halt. 

“See,” Yasha says, a twinge of hopelessness in her voice. “I’m not good at it.”

“ _ Owwwwowow— _ No— _ ow— _ it’s fine, I promise—” a hissing intake of breath—“ _ Owwwowowow.” _

The pain subsides, and Beau flexes her foot gingerly. It smarts like hell, but between being tipsy, being confused about a lot of things in her brain right now, and Yasha’s baleful eyes casting over her, it’s ignorable. “See? It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Yasha says, and Beau picks her arms back up and dances, though now in a significantly more awkward silence than the first one. The quartet playing comes to a slow, and they appear to have finished their song—the volume of conversation in the room swells as couples break apart to eat or to chat. The small crowd gathered around Jester and her date begin to clap and cheer as their dance comes to a dramatic end, Jester again dipped to the floor with one arm extended, fingernails grazing the ground and an exhilarated smile splashed across her face. Yasha drops away from the dance. 

“I’m gonna go, um… do something else.”

And Beau barely gets to blink before she’s gone.

“How does she  _ fucking  _ do that?” She mutters under her breath, now turning to weave her way back to the corner where she had been before Yasha swept her up, and she’s left wondering what the hell just happened to her. 

She needs to figure out how to deal with the weird, gross things inside of her called  _ feelings,  _ like, pronto. 

Just as Beau is beginning to muddle in her brain, thinking maybe she’ll have to talk to Caduceus for some tea or something, or maybe go punch Caleb to feel better—Jester bounds up in her unmistakably bouncy attitude that sometimes feels overbearing, but never unwelcome. Her hair is curled and her dress has slipped a little, her breasts almost tumbling out, and Beau has to carefully train her face on Jester’s as she pulls the neckline back up to its usual resting place. 

“Beau! Beau!” She gives Beau a huge hug, wrapping her in her large but soft arms and lifting Beau off of the ground a little with her effortless strength. “Were you dancing? Did you see me dance? I was  _ amazing,  _ right? I was so good and I saw you dancing with Yasha! That’s so good because” and Jester drops her voice to a stage whisper “ _ I know you are trying to have sex with her.” _

“Okay, whoa, it wasn’t like that.” Beau gently lifts Jester’s hands away from her shoulders but still holding her wrists. “We were just talking. And she didn’t know how to dance, so I thought I’d teach her.”

“ _ You  _ know how to dance?” Jester gasps in that comical way, “ _ Beau!”  _

“Well, yeah.” Beau hates how defensive she gets when anyone brings up anything about her.  _ Do not perceive me. Do not know me.  _ She likes to think of herself as mysterious and unknowable. “I learned when I was… little.”

“WHY DID YOU NEVER TELL ME,” Jester squeals. 

Beau shrugs. “I never felt like it?”

“ _ Beeeeauuuu,”  _ Jester pouts in that way where the syllables get drawn out, and her name,  _ Beau,  _ sounds much more like  _ Bow-uh.  _ “All of those times that me and Nott did the little dances, like in Hupperdook, and you could have been dancing with us!”

“Oh, it… wasn’t really that kind of dancing.”

Jester gasps, her eyebrows waggling mischievously. Her voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. “Did you do like, pole dancing?”

“I… probably could?” Beau, confused for a moment, answers honestly, trying to backpedal out of whatever corner she crammed herself into with this conversation. She shakes her head once to reset her thoughts. “But no, I took ballroom classes a long time ago. My father kind of made me.”

“Oh.” Jester’s face visibly droops, but brightens a second later. “Between you and me, you would probably make a very good stripper.”

Beau’s sure her face is an immediate crimson, but doesn’t get to stutter out a reply before Jester begins humming to herself and skipping away, obviously wandering closer to the snack table. 

Yeah. Beau’s ready to go home after this. 

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished ep 46, no spoilers in the comments (though there are some spoilers for BEYOND it in here. oops.)  
> as always, follow me @beausbian on twitter for updates or my livetweeting thread as i catch up. enjoy the beauyester crumbs.


End file.
